Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/275

 upon my shoulder, answered, "Oh, my guardian spirit and helper in adversity, I too have thought of to-morrow, and doubt whether that horror, that great swine who has me, will not invent an excuse for keeping me. Therefore, though the forest roads are dreadful, and Seth very far away, I will come; I give myself into your hands. Do what you will with me."

"Then the sooner the better, princess. How soon can you be prepared?"

She smiled, and stooping picked up her slippers, saying as she did so, "I am ready!"

There were no arrangements to be made: every instant was of value. So, to be brief, I threw a dark cloak over the damsel's shoulders, for indeed she was clad in little more than her loveliness and the gauziest filaments of a Hither girl's underwear, and hand in hand led her down the log steps, over the splashing, ankle-deep courtyard, and into the shadows of the gateway beyond.

Down the slope we went; along towards the harbour, through a score of deserted lanes where nothing was to be heard but the roar of rain and the lapping of men and beasts, drinking in the shadows as though they never would stop, and so we came at last unmolested to the wharf. There I hid royal Seth between two piles of merchandise, and went to look for a boat suitable to our needs. There were plenty of small craft moored to rings along the quay, and selecting a canoe